Qualifying of the pole for 53rd Rolex 24 at Daytona was the new Michael Shank Racing Ligier JS PS driven by Oswaldo Negri. Negri shared the Honda powered car with John Pew, A.J. Allmendinger and Matt McMurry. Although the car showed speed in practice and qualifying it was not a factor in the race. The team finished in the top-10 but was not running at the conclusion of the race.

Always a threat for the win - Chip Ganassi Racing entered two Rileys powered by Ford's EcoBoost engine. The No. 01 car was driven by past series champion Scott Pruett along with Joey Hand, Charlie Kimball and Sage Karam. The second entry, No. 02, had an eclectic driver lineup with NASCAR drivers - Jamie McMurray and Kyle Larson and from the IRL - Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan.
Other teams expected to be in the mix were defending champions - Action Express Racing and their Corvette DP driven by Sebastien Bourdais, Christian Fittipaldi and Joao Barbosa. Another team favored to win was Wayne Taylor Racing with Max Angelelli and the Taylor brothers - Ricky and Jordan. These teams would live up to their reputation during the race.

Attrition in the Prototype ranks began early. The first Prototype out of the race was the DeltaWing DWC 13 driven by Memo Rojas, Katherine Legge, Gabby Chaves and Andy Meyrick - it retired after just 42-laps. The two SpeedSource SKYACTIV Diesels were also early retirements but not before Tom Long recorded a pair of firsts. Long led a lap in the No. 07 Mazda Prototype which marked the first lap led for a diesel-powered car at the Rolex 24 and also the first overall lap led for Mazda in the history of the event.

Other notable retirements included both the Tequila Patrón ESM Honda HPD ARX entries and the Krohn Racing Ligier JS P2 Judd.
The latter half of the race was a four-car battle between the two Ganassi entries, Action Express and Wayne Taylor Racing. However, clutch problems with just over 2-hours to go dropped the No. 01 Ganassi car from contention. This ended Pruett's chance to become the only six-time overall winner of the Rolex 24.